Purple Hibiscus

Papa-Nnukwu lower himself onto it. His eyes closed almost at once, although the lid of his going-blind eye remained slightly open, as if he were stealing a peek at all of us from the land of tired, ill sleep. He seemed taller lying down, occupying the length of the mattress, and I remembered what he had said about simply reaching out to pluck icheku from the tree, in his youth. The only icheku tree I had seen was huge, with branches grazing the roof of a duplex. Still, I believed Papa-Nnukwu, that he had simply raised his hands to pluck the black icheku pods from the branches.
    “I’ll make
ofe nsala
for dinner. Papa-Nnukwu likes that,” Amaka said.
    “I hope he will eat. Chinyelu said even water has been hard for him to take in the last two days.” Aunty Ifeoma was watching Papa-Nnukwu. She bent and flicked gently at the rough white calluses on his feet. Narrow lines ran across his soles, like cracks in a wall.
    “Will you take him to the medical center today or tomorrow morning, Mom?” Amaka asked.
    “Have you forgotten,
imarozi
, that the doctors went on strike just before Christmas? I called Doctor Nduoma before I left, though, and he said he will come by this evening.”
    Doctor Nduoma lived on Marguerite Cartwright Avenue, too, down the street, in one of the duplexes with BEWARE OF DOGS signs and wide lawns. He was director of the medical center, Amaka told Jaja and me, as we watched him get out of his red Peugeot 504 a few hours later. But since the doctors’ strike had started, he had run a small clinic in town. The clinic was cramped, Amaka said. She had gotten her chloroquine injections there the last time she had malaria, and the nurse had boiled water on a smoky kerosene stove. Amaka was pleased that Doctor Nduoma had come to the house; the fumes alone in the stuffy clinic could choke Papa-Nnukwu, she said.
    Doctor Nduoma had a permanent smile plastered on his face, as though he would break bad news to a patient with a smile. He hugged Amaka, and then shook hands with Jaja and me. Amaka followed him into her bedroom to look at Papa-Nnukwu.
    “Papa-Nnukwu is so skinny now,” Jaja said. We were sitting side by side on the verandah. The sun had fallen and there was a light breeze. Many of the children from the flats were playing football in the compound. From a flat upstairs, an adult yelled, “
Nee anya
, if you children make patches on the garage walls with that ball, I will cut off your ears!” The children laughed as the football hit the garage walls; the dust-covered ball left the walls polka-dotted brown.
    “Do you think Papa will find out?” I asked.
    “What?”
    I laced my fingers together. How could Jaja not know what I meant? “That Papa-Nnukwu is here with us. In the same house.”
    “I don’t know.”
    Jaja’s tone made me turn and stare at him. His brows were not knotted in worry, as I was sure mine were. “Did you tellAunty Ifeoma about your finger?” I asked. I should not have asked. I should have let it be. But there, it was out. It was only when I was alone with Jaja that the bubbles in my throat let my words come out.
    “She asked me, and I told her.” He was tapping his foot on the verandah floor in an energetic rhythm.
    I stared at my hands, at the short nails that Papa used to cut to a chafing shortness, when I would sit between his legs and his cheek would brush mine gently, until I was old enough to do it myself—and I always cut them to a chafing shortness, too. Had Jaja forgotten that we never told, that there was so much that we never told? When people asked, he always said his finger was “something” that had happened at home. That way, it was not a lie and it let them imagine some accident, perhaps involving a heavy door. I wanted to ask Jaja why he had told Aunty Ifeoma, but I knew there was no need to, that this was one question he did not know the answer to.
    “I am going to wipe down Aunty Ifeoma’s car,” Jaja said, getting up. “I wish the water ran so I could wash it. It is so dusty.”
    I watched him walk into the flat. He had never washed a car at home. His shoulders seemed broader, and I wondered if it was possible for a teenager’s shoulders to broaden in a week. The mild breeze was heavy with the smell of dust and the bruised leaves Jaja had cut. From the kitchen, the spices in Amaka’s ofe nsala tickled my nose. I realized then that Jaja had been tapping his feet to the beat of an Igbo song that Aunty Ifeoma and my cousins sang at